Developers face the tedious task of having to manually code animated transitions between screens. While these transitions provide a richer environment to operate in, the burden placed on the developers becomes a barrier to the utilization of the animated transitions. The developers must hardcode the effects that occur on components and the logic that makes them work. When multiple effects are considered, even more coding is required. Consequently, the use of animated transitions between screens is not as prevalent as would be otherwise.
Picture a typical forms-based application. The user is presented with a GUI consisting of various widgets such as text, text fields, buttons, list-boxes, and checkboxes, which they fill-out, select, and click appropriately. The user then clicks on the ever-present “Submit” button which usually results in this GUI disappearing and then, after some delay, being replaced by a completely different GUI experience. The new GUI presents more text fields, more information, more buttons, but mostly new items in different places.
Users usually puzzle over the new GUI for a bit, then proceed to fill out the information appropriately, click another Submit button, and thus continue on in their journey through the application. This application is typical an HTML-based web application, where the GUIs tend to be very static (and where the capabilities of the viewing application tend to be more limited than, say, a rich-client toolkit). But it is really the same in most applications, regardless of language and toolkit choice. It is simply the easiest and most obvious way for such applications to work; the user fills out the information needed by the server, they submit this info, the server processes the entry data, and then GUI displays the results and asks for more information, as appropriate.
The difficulty for the user is in constantly being presented with new GUIs that must be read to understand what action must be taken next. Sometimes, the user may be transitioned to a new screen, with little information as to why the user ended up at that page. Consequently, many of today's GUI navigation processes fail to provide users with the logical connection of who transitions occurred between states.
There exists a need to enable the use of animated transitions between screens in a simplified manner, in order to alleviate the burden currently imposed on developers.